It is known to those skilled in the art that at the exit of a machine performing the closing seam of two stockings to make a pantyhose article, the legs of the article tend to overlap each other in a braid or twist-like fashion, and that they need to be separated to allow the transfer of the pantyhose article into further operating locations such as the one where a machine can carry out the sewing of the toe of the feet.
The U.S. Pat. No. 4,444,140 discloses a transfer device for automatically transferring the hosiery blanks from a Line-Closer to a Toe Closer which includes an L-shaped member having a horizontal arm with a pair of U-shaped spaced brackets to laterally space the leg portions of fabric during the transfer and a pair of hooks to remove the panty from the corresponding hosiery forms of the Line Closer, and turn it for 90.degree. for its reversed loading on the suction tubes of the Toe Closer.
But this known device requires that the Line Closer is equipped with several pairs of U-shaped brackets similar in size, shape and spacing to brackets of the said horizontal arm of transfer device.
Furthermore, it's required that in the operation an operator loads each item in turn in the Line Closer and them laterally separates the freely downwardly hanging foot and leg portions of each pair of hosiery blanks.
Also, the transferring of the hosiery from the Line Closer to the Toe Closer includes a step wherein the leg and foot portions of the hosiery are transferred to and are retained in the Toe Closer and the panty portion is retained in the Line Closer.
However, the time necessary for non-specialized operators to carry out this operation is too long with respect to the time of sewing the stockings together, which takes a few seconds; accordingly, there is a need for specially trained personnel to perform the laying of the stockings onto said supports as fast and over long periods of time as required, but nonetheless, the production potentiality of the Toe-Closer machine cannot be exploited in full as it is limited by the speed of this manual operation. Such limitation and the high cost of specialized labor, contribute to raise the cost of making the pantyhose.